Everyone Just Calm Down

Who's salty? You're salty.

LeBron James put an end to Decision 2014 (or The Indecision) yesterday by announcing he would be taking his talents back to Huntington Beach… on Lake Erie. He’s returning to the Cavaliers and try as I might, I haven’t found a welcome note in Comic Sans from owner Dan Gilbert.

What happened next was a reactionary wave so salty that it would have made the Dead Sea blush. Heat fans were mad, Knicks fans were mad. People who don’t even care about LeBron were mad.

Just calm down. I haven’t seen such a constant state of vitriolic nonsense about a pro athlete probably ever. You know that no matter what James did, you were going to decry him as some sort of punk. Stay in Miami? “Ohhh he just wants to be the man. Big man.” Move on to Cleveland? “Ohhh he just wants to surround himself with young guns to take the load off of him.” Move to Houston? “Ohhh all he wants to do is go around creating super teams so he doesn’t have to do the work himself (ignoring that the “Big Three” was LeBron, the rotting husk of Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, who went into full-on third fiddle mode).” Move on to New York? “Ohhh he just wants to be in the limelight, he doesn’t care about the game.” Move on to Chicago? “Ohhh he thinks he can replace Michael Jordan? Who does he think he is?”

To those of you who decried LeBron, think long and hard and be true to yourself. You would have had these reactions.

Yes The Decision was stupid. Who wouldn’t do something stupid like that when everybody in their heart of hearts wanted him to do something like that?

He did the exact opposite this time, and everybody has decided it’s just as bad, if not worse. He tried to learn from The Decision by quietly making his decision and not making a big spectacle of it. The media wouldn’t have that. His website crashed around rumors that an announcement was coming at 3:30 EST Thursday. There were people camped out in front of his house. So many, even, that there was a car accident. This was not LeBron James’ fault. The coverage of LeBron’s Indecision 2014 is exactly what’s wrong with sports media today. Multiple sportswriters were pulling random nonsense out of their rear ends in order to garner clicks. People were eating it up because they wanted to be able to get Real Mad about LeBron going back to Cleveland, or staying, or going wherever.

Everybody just chill. Let the man be. He doesn’t owe you anything, and he offered an explanation. Everyone has decided that his explanation isn’t good enough, and he should be drawn and quartered for it.

Let the man be.